"This," Boamund said grimly, "is mutiny."
Turquine grinned. "Well done, young Snotty," he said. "You"re learning."
"Mutiny," Boamund went on, "and treason. Unless Sir Turquine immediately repents of his words, I shall have no alternative but to declare him dishonoured."
"You try it," Turquine replied, "and see how far it"ll get you. Because," he added, with the confidence of strength, "I don"t need that clapped-out old sc.r.a.pheap of a van any more. Look at this!" And, with a magnificent gesture, he threw a set of keys on the table. "They"re so pleased with me," he said, "they"ve let me drive the company van. And," he added conclusively, "It"s a Renault. So you can take your honour and you can..."
Boamund"s expression did not change. He simply leant forward, took the keys from the table, and put them in his pocket.
Turquine nearly fell over.
"Here," he said, "you can"t do that, it"s not my-"
"Agreed," replied Boamund. "It has now become the property of the Order. And you, Sir Turquine, are dishonoured. Now, then..."
There was uproar for a moment, what with Sir Turquine trying to explain that it didn"t work like that, and Sir Lamorak and Sir Pertelope both simultaneously asking if they could have it for the weekend. Boamund silenced them all with a blow from the mace, the top of which came off and rolled under the sofa.
"Since Sir Turquine is no longer ent.i.tled to speak," Boamund said, "is there anyone else who wishes to express an opinion?"
There was a long silence, and then Galahaut the Haut Prince got up, rather sheepishly, and looked around.
"Look, Bo," he said, "you know, in principle I"m with you all the way about finding the Grail. One hundred per cent. I think finding the Grail is right for us, so let"s do it, yes, fine. Only," and he drew a deep breath, "timing-wise, perhaps we could, you know, readjust our schedules a bit, because my agent says there"s this bit in a dog-food commercial coming up..."
Boamund"s face became ominous, but Galahaut seemed not to have noticed. "It"s a real opportunity for me," he went on, "to get myself established in dog-food work generally. They say they want me for the tall, good-looking man of mature years in a chunky Arran sweater who says that top breeders recommend it. Play your cards right, they said, this could be a second Captain Birds Eye."
"No," said Boamund. "We leave in a week."
Galahaut looked round the room reproachfully; but everyone happened to be looking the other way, apart from Turquine, who was sulking. "Come on, Bo," he said, "this could be the break I"ve been waiting for. One really good commercial, it"s better than a West End hit these days. Look at the Oxo woman," he added.
"Who"s Oxo?" Boamund asked.
The flame in Galahaut"s eyes kindled for a moment, and then died away, to be replaced by an unmistakable flicker of guile. "All right, then," he said meekly, "you"re the boss. You can count on me."
Very true, Boamund thought; I could count up to two on your faces alone, you devious little toad. I know what you"re thinking, and we"ll see about that. "Anyone else?" he said.
Lamorak was getting to his feet, and Boamund narrowed his eyes. He"d been practising it in front of the mirror for days.
"And before Sir Lamorak addresses us," he said, "I should like to make it plain that I don"t think we"re going to find the Grail down the Portobello Road. So Sir Lamorak can jolly well unload all those boxes and things he put into the van when he thought my back was turned."
Lamorak groaned. "Oh, come on," he said. "It"s got to be worth a try, Bo. You go to a street market these days, there"s all sorts of old junk . . ."
"The Grail," Boamund replied icily, "is not old junk. It"s-"
"Yes," said Pertelope suddenly. "What is it exactly? I"m sure we"d all be fascinated to hear."
"Ah yes," said Boamund, drawing the tip of his tongue around lips suddenly dry as sandpaper, "I was hoping someone would ask me that." He paused; and as he did so, a tiny snowflake of inspiration drifted into his mind.
He could lie.
"The Holy Grail," he said, smoothly and confidently," is the cup, or rather chalice, from which Our Lord drank at the Last Supper. No doubt you remember the relevant pa.s.sage in scripture, Pertelope? Or did you spend that lesson drawing little dragons in the margins of your breviary?"
The Grail Knights were sitting with their mouths open, staring at him. It was easy, this lying business. Gosh, yes . . .
"Anyway," Boamund went on, "the Grail is a fluted, doublehanded cup wrought of the purest gold. Its body is inlaid with the richest gems, amethyst and chrysophrase, diamonds and rubies, and across the rim is engraved in letters that shine like fire . . . er . . ."
Five stunned faces watched him move his lips desperately, as he ransacked his brain for something appropriate. He closed his eyes, and the words came. In fact, they came so easily that you could almost believe . . .
"In letters," he repeated briskly, "that shine like fire: IE SUI LE VRAY SANC GREAL.
. . . if memory serves me correctly," he added smugly. "Any questions?"
There was a long, long silence. Finally, Pertelope stood up again. He was trying to look sceptical but his heart wasn"t in it, you could tell.
"What was that again?" he asked.
Boamund repeated the text of the inscription. It sounded better and better. Maybe this was a what-you-call-it, miracle.
"Why"s it in French?" Pertelope demanded. Something wobbled inside Boamund"s stomach. He was about to say "Er" when Pertelope continued.
"I mean," he said, "it ought to be in Latin, shouldn"t it? All your religious stuffs always in Latin, so. . ."
Boamund smiled. He"d had time to think, and the words came smoothly from him.
"You forget, Sir Pertelope," he said, "that at Our Lord"s pa.s.sion the Grail was taken by Joseph of Arimathea and borne away by him to Albion, where," he added cheerfully, "as everyone knows, we speak French. Satisfied?"
Pertelope growled unhappily and sat down. In his place, Turquine got up. Although he was dishonoured and not allowed to speak, Boamund felt that a magnanimous Grand Master could allow himself to be flexible, especially if he could make old Turkey look a prize a.s.s in front of the others. He nodded, therefore, and smiled.
"So this whacking great gold cup thing," said Sir Turquine slowly, "with all these jewels and what have you stuck in it, is the cup from the Last Supper, is it?"
Boamund"s smile remained fixed, and he nodded. Much more of this, he thought, I could get a job hanging from someone"s rear-view mirror.
"I see," said Turquine. "Times must have been good in the carpentry business back in Our Lord"s time, if they could afford huge great gold cups with jewels and-"
"Thank you," said Boamund, "I think you"ve made your point. Naturally," he said, "at the moment of Christ"s trans.m.u.tation of the wine, the chalice too underwent a similar metamorphosis. Hence its present nature."
Turquine sat down again, red-faced as a traffic light, while someone at the back sn.i.g.g.e.red. This time, however, Galahaut was on his feet.
"Great," he said, "that"s clarified that one for us, no problem. But," he added, nastily, "you don"t happen to have any idea where the thing is, do you? I mean, yes, it was brought to Albion by Joseph of - wherever it was you said we"re all agreed on that, but that was all rather a long time ago, don"t you think? I mean, it could be anywhere by now."
Boamund"s smile became, if anything, a little bit wider. He really had hoped someone would ask him that.
"Sir Galahaut," he said, with the air of a man who"s just about to find his way into the dictionary of quotations, "if it were not lost, we should not have to find it."
There was silence again, and then a buzz of Yes-buts from the a.s.sembled knights. Boamund silenced them with a bang of the mace.
"Brothers," he said, and ignored the voice at the back who asked who"d appointed him shop steward, "when the ancient hermit gave me my commission, he also entrusted me with a parchment of great antiquity, which will surely guide us to the resting place of the Holy Grail. I have this same parchment . . ." He patted his inside pocket, frowned and started to rummage. Just then the kitchen door opened, and Toenail trotted through.
"Here it is," he whispered. "You left it in the back pocket of your brown cords. Just as well I looked through them before I put them in the washing-machine, because otherwise-"
"Yes, thank you," Boamund said, "you may go now. This parchment," and he held it up for them all to see, "will surely guide us to the spot."
Pertelope was up yet again. "Hold on," he said. "If that thing"s so old, and says where the b.l.o.o.d.y thing is, then how come . . .?"
But the mood of the a.s.sembly had changed. Bedevere kicked him on the shins, while someone behind him told him to stop being such a clever little devil and sit down. With an appropriate flourish, Boamund broke the seal, opened the parchment and read it.
"Oh," he said.
The Order of the Knights of the Holy Grail were not the first adventurers to seek out this fabulous and evocative item. Far from it.
To give only one example: in the seventeenth year of the reign of King Ban of Benwick - Benwick, it should be explained, was a kingdom lying between Albion and Europe which to a large extent shared Albion"s isolation from the rest of humanity and her devotion to magic and chivalry; it vanished into the sea shortly after Arthur"s abdication, and tradition has it that this was a deliberate decision on the Benicians" part, to save their nation from ever becoming a mere federal part of the united states of mediocrity that made up the World. Since all known Benicians vanished with their kingdom it would be interesting to learn where this attractive little tale is supposed to have originated - a young Benician knight by the name of Sir Prime de Ganys was riding forth upon errantry one day when he came across a castle in the middle of a desolate land.
Since night was rapidly closing in and the young chevalier had strayed far from his path, he knocked at the gate of the castle and was admitted by the duty dwarf.
It turned out that the castellan of the castle was a beautiful damosel without a lord, who lived there all alone apart from twenty-seven tall, well-built young esquires and a small colony of dwarves, who had s.p.a.cious and well-appointed quarters of their own at the bottom of a disused wellshaft. Sir Prime was ushered in to a splendid banquet, feasted on broiled duck with lapwing, and entertained by a quartet of dwarfish minstrels playing all the bits they could remember out of Ma Beale Dame.
Happening to fall into conversation with the castellan, Sir Prime discovered that the castle, which was large and rather a nuisance to keep up, was supposed to be the repository of the Holy Grail, left there hundreds of years previously by Joseph of Arimathea as security for a substantial Snakes and Ladders debt. The only problem was that, what with the castle being so big and so many of its rooms having to be shut up for most of the year, n.o.body could remember where the dratted thing had last been seen. Naturally, periodic attempts were made to find it; but since these searches tended to reveal nothing more cheerful than further outbreaks of dry rot and death-watch beetle, they were usually abandoned at an early stage. What was needed, the castellan continued, was a fearless young hero who wasn"t easily cowed by the sight of huge patches of purple fungus growing out of the walls, who would make a thorough search of the place, find the Grail and thus provide the damosel with a nice capital sum with which to finance her dream of turning the old place into either an eventide home or a sports complex.
Sir Prime"s imagination was fired by this entrancing tale, and he pressed the castellan for further details. She obligingly produced a complete set of plans and elevations, builders" estimates, grants of outline planning permission, detailed budgets, profit-and-loss projections prepared by her accountants, and a joint-venture agreement by which, for the investment of a paltry seventy thousand marks, the knight would be ent.i.tled to a forty-per-cent share in the equity, together with interest on capital and fifty per cent of net profits. Delighted, Sir Prime produced his cheque book, wrote out a draft for seventy thousand marks, signed the contract and at once fell into a deep slumber.
When he awoke, he found himself lying on the cold fells. All trace of the castle, the castellan and his signed part of the contract had vanished. Furthermore, he seemed to have misplaced his gold crucifix and a number of other trifles of personal adornment.
As he rode homewards, he encountered an ancient hermit, to whom he related his strange and terrifying adventure. The hermit, controlling his laughter by stuffing the sleeve of his robe into his mouth, mumbled that Sir Prime would have appeared to have had the ill fortune to wander into the fabulous castle of Lyonesse. If that was the case, then the damosel was none other than La Beale Dame de Lyonesse, and the knight should count himself lucky to have got away with just being ripped off for seventy grand. Some poor fools, he explained, had fared far worse than that. Really stupid knights, for example, had been known to buy two weeks in July and August at Lyonesse for the rest of time; fortunately really cla.s.sic suckers like that were as rare as virgins in a . . .
Predictably, Sir Turquine was the first to break the silence.
"What," he asked, "does it say?"
"Um," Boamund replied.
"It says Um, does it?" replied Turquine. "Gosh, how helpful."
Boamund stared at the paper in his hands, oblivious even to Turquine. At last he cleared his throat and spoke, albeit in a rather high voice.
"I think it"s probably a riddle of some sort," he said. "You know, like My first is in-"
"What," said a voice from the back, "does it say?"
Blushing fit to shame Aurora, Boamund replied, "It"s a . . . I don"t know. It"s like a sort of list. Or a recipe." He thought for a moment. "Or a receipt, maybe." He scratched his head.
Turquine grinned. "Give it here," he demanded, and Boamund made no effort to resist when he grabbed at the paper. It was almost as if he wanted someone else to have the job of reading the thing out.
"Now," said Turquine, "what have we . . .? Good Lord."
Various knights urged him to get on with it. He bit his lip, and then read out: "LE SANC GREAL: INSTRUCTIONS The Ap.r.o.n of Invincibility The Personal Organiser of Wisdom The Socks of Inevitability The first may be found where children are carried in pockets, and came with the first First Fleet.
The second may be found in the safe haven where time is money, where money goes but never returns, and in the great office under and beyond the sea.
The third, G.o.d"s gift to the Grail Knights, may be found where one evening can last forever, in the domain of the best-loved psychopath under the arch of the sky, in the kingdom of the flying deer.
Armed with these, let the Grail Knight reclaim what is his, release Albion from her yellow fetters, and enjoy his tea without fear of the washing-up."
At the back somebody coughed. At moments like this, somebody always does. "I think young Snotty is right," said Turquine at last. "It"s some sort of riddle."
Bedevere closed his mouth with an effort, blinked and said, "That bit about the safe haven. Rings a bell, don"t you know."
Five knights looked at him and he swallowed.
"Well," he went on, "reminds me of something I read once. Or perhaps I heard it on something. It"s on the tip of my. . ."
"It"s a tricky one, isn"t it?" Lamorak ventured. "Maybe there"s someone we could ask, you know, a hermit or something. Anybody know a good hermit?"
"Read it again."
Turquine obliged and this time there was a hail of suggestions, all made simultaneously. Eventually, Boamund restored order by hammering on the table with the mace.
"Gentlemen," he said, stretching a point, "we obviously can"t decipher this. It"s not our job. The cardinal rule is, knights don"t think. So the next step is to find someone who can make sense of it all. Now then, in the old days, you"d ask a hermit, or an anchorite, or else you"d be riding along through the woods one morning, minding your own business, looking for a stray falcon maybe, and there"d be this old crone sitting beside the road. "Prithee master," she"d say, "carry me across yon river to my cottage." And you"d say..."
Somebody at the back urged him to get to the point. He pulled himself together.
"Anyway," he continued, "the point I"m trying to make is, that"s what we"d have done then, but that was then and this is now. Right?"
Five heads nodded cautiously. This was either wisdom or the bleeding obvious, the problem is always to tell the two apart.
"So," said Boamund, "you lot know all about now. Who do you go to nowadays when you"ve got something you don"t understand that needs explaining?"
"Yes?" said Miss Cartwright, briskly. "Can I help you?" She smiled that toothpaste smile of hers, which any of the seasoned timewasters of Ventcaster would recognise as an invitation not to try her too high this morning. "Something about a form you"d like me to explain to you?"
"That"s right," said Boamund, blushing slightly. Apart from the girl in the service station, who was clearly a person of no status, feudally speaking, and so didn"t count, this was the first woman he"d spoken to in fifteen hundred years. "Actually," he said, "before we get down to that part of it, there"s just one thing . . .?"
It"s one of them, Miss Cartwright"s inner voice said to her, I can feel it in my water. "Yes?" she said.
"Um," Boamund replied. "Only, do you have to be a citizen to get advice, or . . .?" He bit his lip, obviously embarra.s.sed. "You see, I"m not sure I qualify, because if a citizen"s the same thing as what we call a burgher or a burgoys de roy, I"m not really one, being more your sort of knightly..."
One of the maxims that had always guided Miss Cartwright in her job was that the good adviser always answers the correct question, which may not necessarily have been the question the enquirer originally asked. Focusing on the word "citizen", therefore, she rea.s.sured Boamund that the services of the Bureau were available to all, regardless of race, creed, nationality or colour, and it followed that you didn"t have to be a British subject to use it.
"Ah," said Boamund after a while, "I think that"s all right, then. Mind you," he went on, "I don"t think I am a, what you said, British subject, because I"m not British, I"m Albionese, and as for the other part I don"t really think I"m a subject, more a sort of-"
"What exactly was your enquiry?" asked Miss Cartwright. "Something to do with a form, was it?"
Boamund said, "that"s right."
Miss Cartwright looked at him. Sometimes you just have to guess. "Housing Benefit?" she asked, basing the a.s.sumption on the leather jacket. "Income Support?"
"What"s Income Support?"
Now, said Miss Cartwright to herself, we"re getting somewhere. She explained. She was used to explaining, and she did it quickly, clearly and concisely. When she had finished, there was no doubt that Boamund understood; but his reaction was - well, odd. it was as if he was surprised. Shocked even.
"Really?" he said at last.